Fairy land. I suppose, if you had a son, you would expect he should be divinity professor at five years old; but, I am afraid, Lucy would not be at all a fit wife for him."

"Look ye," said I," you shall not laugh me out of my argument; and so arm yourself with patience, and hear me out. Your supposition is an excellent good one; but I am afraid I shall be less mistaken, in supposing that a child, who has been taught no other end in behaving itself well than the gaining some favourite point or some darling toy, will never make a disinterested minister, will never regard the reality of virtue, and will be ready to throw off even the appearance of it when it is contradictory to interest."

"But must one never give a poor child any encouragement then ?" cried Prudentia.

"You mistake me entirely," said I. "Let good behaviour be always attended by reward; but you make it the consequence of bad behaviour. As for the particular rewards of toys and sugar-plums, I confess myself, in general, no great friend to them: the approbation of friends is a better incentive to act right, and gives, even to such children, a pleasure of a much higher kind: these should be mixed, however, in a proper degree; and certainly even the last ought not to be too much in. sisted on. The notion of doing right for the sake of doing right,should be gently inculcated,and strength

ened by degrees, as they advance in age and under. standing this will settle, in time, into a firm and steadfast rightness of mind, which interest shall never bias, which adversity shall never shake, which prosperity shall never enervate: from hence will proceed a calm and even cheerfulness of temper, a regular and uniform conduct, that shall make them for ever happy in themselves and respected by others: not the wild gaiety of one hour, damped by uneasy reflections the next; not a perpetual dispute between reason and passion, which makes people good by fits and starts only. Miserable is the state of these; and yet, perhaps, it is almost always the effect of their not knowing, from the first, what end to aim at. Interest and ambition attract them by a thousand glittering temptations, and yet, in spite of all these, in the midst of their pursuit, they feel themselves often checked by the secret monitor in the heart, who tells them we were formed for something nobler than greatness, and that neither riches nor pleasures are the chief end of life.

"But what is this nobler end? Perhaps it is the applause of men, the immortality which fame bestows, or, at least, the pleasure of being well looked on and esteemed by the people among whom we live. Fatal imagination! source of wild and mischievous exploits, of wars and desolations; and, in less noble minds, the origin of hypocrisy and ever hateful deceit! To look upon the respect and admiration of men as the ultimate end of life, is, perhaps, one of the most dangerous errors into

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which we can fall; while it is the perfection of a character to pay a proper regard to it, to rejoice in it as the amiable attendant of real virtue; but to be willing to sacrifice the fairest appearance to what is really right, and bear the contempt of mankind rather than not deserve their esteem."

XII.

On the Distinction between Cunning and Prudence.

LORD BACON has an essay upon Cunning that, if it fall into wrong hands, is more likely to teach people sleights and devices, than to furnish a warning against them; and yet the essay is, in itself, excellent but, methinks, it were time well bestowed, to make a just distinction between cunning and prudence, a blameable artfulness, and a laudable dexterity. To fix the bounds of these two borderers, and determine the nice difference,

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"Where ends the virtue, or begins the vice;"

To exercise the authority of superior reason and understanding; to make use of their lawful advantages can surely be no fault: on the contrary, it is making the best of our nature, and employing faculties that were not intended to lie idle. It is by reason and understanding that human kind are superior to brutes of infinitely greater strength and force of body, and the same sort of difference subsists among men. A brutal nature is to be considered in the same light, whether the animal it

governs go upon two legs or four; only in our behaviour towards the brutes of our own kind we have this additional consideration; that there is, at the same time, a mixture of something divine and excellent in every human soul, which claims strongly our assistance, in subduing that worse half, so prevalent in the many. Thus, those who by wisdom lead others less wise to act wisely, not only make them, as inferior natures, subservient to excellent purposes, but, at the same time, do them a real and important good, and raise them above what they were. When, by innocent arts, we soothe an uneasy temper; when, by suspending the impetuosity of a person's passion, we give him leisure to recall his reason-we do but free him from the worst of tyrants, and defend the good and reasonable man within him from the hasty influence of the madman.

But to do evil that good may come of it, nothing can ever make allowable. The moment we deviate from truth and integrity our very best intentions are all poisoned and perverted.

To learn what we can, by an acute observation of the countenances and manners of those with whom we are concerned, is certainly a very blameless point of wisdom; to pry into their secret thoughts, uninterested, and only to betray them, is the baseness of hearkening at doors, and looking in at windows.

The cunningly preventing objections to any thing